


Vod'ika

by B_Radley



Series: Gandalf's Way [8]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Bonding, F/F, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Love, Post-Episode: s02e19-20 Twilight of the Apprentice, Post-Star Wars Rebels: The Siege of Lothal, Teaching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 18:17:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7651429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/B_Radley/pseuds/B_Radley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ahsoka Tano teaches a young warrior the meaning of her heritage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vod'ika

**Prologue: The Artist**

The artist sits in her cabin. Looking at the art that adorns her walls. She takes a sip from the bottle of precious _ne'tra gal._ She picks up a piece of heavy paper and looks at the face drawn upon it.

A face drawn from memory. A face in a rare moment of stillness, even for one so serene. Always in motion. A rare moment of contemplation; a sharp canine worrying a lip in concentration.

She thinks of the soldier who shares their fight. Of the glimpse of quiet agony on his face when the hatch of the _Phantom_ opened and two stepped out where there had been three. Of his eyes tracking upward; the moment past. Of the steely determination passed down through his copied blood from his _buir_. The _buir_ of millions of his _Vod'e_. Marching far way.

Liquid splotches dot the bottom of the sketch, as she remembers when she drew it. Shortly after the warrior first climbed down into their lives.

**The Warrior**

Sabine Wren looks at the bruise that darkens her face. She stands in the Ghost's 'fresher gazing in the mirror at the damage from their encounter on Lothal. An encounter with something so dark and powerful, that even Kanan can't speak of how they will fight it.

Her gazes tracks downward to a matching bruise that marks her chest. _Oh, yeah. Such a fucking skilled, badass Mando warrior._ Taken down by her own blaster shots.

"Those look pretty bad, Sabine," says a clear cool voice behind her. A clear cool voice attached to a tall, beautiful Togruta, standing just outside the single shower stall, toweling her body off.

 _That long, beautiful body,_ the thought comes unbidden into her mind. Her stomach flips, as she thinks of another tall, dark bronze skinned body, with violet eyes and close-cropped hair.

She shakes her head, willing the memory to go away and trying not to stare at the warrior. _I hope that I am not drooling._

The Smirk on the _be'jetti_ \- Ahsoka's face tells her that she just might be.

Ahsoka walks over to her. Her hand touches the bruises on Sabine's face. Her hand is cool as she moves it down to the lower bruise, but stops, as she seems to thinks better of it.

The Smirk softens into an encouraging smile. "I've seen worse," she says. "You'll live, _Mando'ade_."

Anger comes to Sabine's whole being, as she thinks of the pain and the humiliation of being taken down so easily.

"What the hell would you know? The first battle we're in together and you faint. You weren't even doing anything except some mystical _jetti_ bullshit."

_Where the hell is that coming from?_

She starts to apologize, as she sees the transient moments of surprise, hurt, and then anger in those blue eyes.

Steely blue-fired anger. Soon replaced with that maddening calm.

"I know a lot more than you think, little girl."

Sabine gives into the anger. "Oh, yeah. How can you know so much? How would you know what it means to be _Mando'ade_?"

She watches the emotions play over the Togruta's face. The gamut from pain to anger to regret. All in the space of five seconds.

Sabine looks away. When she looks back, those blue eyes are as calm and serene as ever. There is something else in them as well.

 _Challenge_.

"Are you willing to be shown that I know what it means to be so? Are you willing to learn the lessons that I learned from the hundreds of men who practically raised me? So that you might stop feeling sorry for yourself?"

"Be warned," the older woman continues, "The lessons that I teach might hurt. As much as it did when you let the big bad beat you."

Ahsoka adds one more word. A word that bites through Sabine's humiliation.

_Kyr'tsad'ika_

Child of Death Watch.

_I am Sabine Wren. Of Clan Wren. Of House Vizla._

She looks the _jetti_ in the eye. "Meet me in the cargo hold. I'll pound the shit out of you first; if that doesn't take that smirk off of your face, then we'll see from there. Bring your _jetti'kad_.

Ahsoka nods.

XXXXX

_Damn!_

_Not very eloquent, Wren._

She stops thinking as she dodges yet another roundhouse kick to her head. The two combatants circle each other warily. Sabine takes the second of circling to wipe the sweat out of her eyes. Her workout clothes are soaked.

But so are Ahsoka's. She is ecstatic to see that both of them are breathing heavily. They are both staggering after three quarters of an hour's worth of combat. Not sparring. This has the feeling of raw, no-holds-barred combat.

She realizes early on in the contest, that she has let go of the anger that she had felt towards the older warrior. Both of them had quickly developed a rhythm - a rhythm that felt at times dangerous, even deadly, but a rhythm of two warriors trying to push each other to be their best.

They were both wounded. Sabine's blood decorates the white forehead markings - the symbol of Fulcrum. A classic Keldabe Kiss to the nose. That wasn't learned in a Jedi training gym. Somewhere, the Togruta had been taught by Mandos. Some of the other holds and blows also originated on Mandalore.

This was not to say that Sabine has laid down and showed her _shebs_ in surrender. Blood is gushing from the full lips of the huntress, from at least three different punches. A large bruise is also forming on her jaw, a blow that had brought a shaken head, but also a wistful grin after it landed, as if remembering other similar blows. Both of the women's ribcages feel as if they had been run over by walkers. Sabine had actually forgotten the bruise on her face and chest in the melee.´

The grins, the joys, the smiles, the gentle insults had changed the tenor of their meeting from hostility and anger to outright joy. Sabine could see the sharp teeth of the carnivore baring in a feral grin. A grin that had begun to match her own, as they both gave in to the joys of their separate heritages. The Togruta, a consummate hunter, with the resulting canny sense of survival, and the Mandalorian, the consummate warrior - a warrior bred to win, and therefore survive.

Their shared laughter had drawn an audience on the catwalk above. The entire _Ghost_ crew was watching in rapt attention.

Ahsoka feints towards her head; as the young Mandalorian dodges, the Togruta switches her punch and grapples with Sabine's muscular arms. Both sets of arms strain as as they struggle for advantage. Ahsoka's back foot slips, as she insists on fighting barefoot. Sabine is able to lift the ex-Jedi up and hurl her towards a bulkhead.

She is about to crow in triumph as Ahsoka goes flying. It is cut short as she realizes that she is flying through the air, as well, as one of Ahsoka's strong hands has grabbed her arm on the way towards her destination. They both strike the unpadded bulkhead, hard. They wind up in a pile, fighting for the breath that has been knocked across to the opposite side of the bay.

XXXXX

Ahsoka's head raises from the deck as her vision clears and stops spinning. She looks up at the catwalk and sees their audience. She sees the concern on Hera's face; the wide-eyed wonder of a teenaged boy seeing the techniques and skill at play, but also dealing with his own racing hormones at watching two beautiful female warriors, both of whom he has had unbidden dreams about, beat the snot out of one another. Kanan's face is thoughtful as he watches, thinking of how easily they had been taken down by the Sith Lord. She rolls her eyes as she sees Zeb and Chopper exchanging credits in their own little twisted betting pool.

She looks at her opponent, whose head is resting on her belly where it ended up after their unscheduled flight. "So, you ready to admit that I kicked your ass?" she says, as soon as she regains her breath.

A gasping laugh reverberates through her gut. "Not on your life, _jetti'ka_ ," the girl says. "As soon as I puke, I am going to get up and wipe the deck with you."

"Just as long as there is space for me to puke beside you," comes the snark.

Their laughter is warm and sustained. Their audience loses interest, as Hera encourage them to get back to work. They lie there comfortably. Their eyes close as they lose themselves in thought. One, the thought of those who have gone before - those who taught a snarky young girl to fight and live. The other - the thought of letting her new family down after the encounter with the Sith Lord, as Kanan called it.

"Ahsoka,"

"Mmm?"

"Where did you learn hand-to-hand like that? I know that the Jedi teach all manner of self-defense, but many of those moves were pure Mando."

The older warrior is silent. Sabine thinks that she has upset her again.

"I wasn't exaggerating when I said I was raised by hundreds of men. Men who were Mando in all but birth. Men who took the defense of their Jedi as their ultimate mission because it was bred into them."

She falls silent again. Sabine digest this. "You mean the clone troopers? I had never thought of them as Mando. I knew they were cloned from one of the best Mando bounty hunters, but...."

"They took their traditions, seriously. They were bred into them; imprinted on them by their Mando drill sergeants."

Her face grows even more wistful. Sabine turns towards her, waiting patiently. She realizes she is bleeding on the warrior's workout clothing and starts to get up. Ahsoka's hand stays her.

"I was a know-it-all fourteen year-old Padawan when I came to the war. They were already veterans of three months of hard fighting when I came in there, full of advice and myself," she says.

"You have to know, that while I was actually chronologically older than them, they aged twice for each of my years."

Sabine absorbs this. "There was one of them. My captain. Captain Rex." Sabine can see the smile broaden on the Jedi's face."

"I tried to tell him how to do his job. Me, a tiny little girl with a Smirk bigger than the planet and a smartassed attitude. Yeah, I technically outranked him, as a Commander. I of course, told him so. He would've been perfectly in his rights to smack me down."

"Instead, he quietly tells me that in his book, experience outranks everything. No anger, no condescension, anything. Just quiet competence."

Sabine listens rapt."He did more to earn my respect in that first meeting than anything else he could've said." She grins. "He still gave me a ration of shit when I did something stupid, which happened a lot in those days."

Sabine can see that in her mind's eye. She smiles.

"But his respect for me grew, as I learned and grew. I was probably still a bit more reckless for his taste, but so was my Master - his General."

Ahsoka gets up and walks over to a storage locker. She grabs two bottles of cold water and hands one to Sabine. They take seats against a bulkhead, their shoulders touching.

"We became good friends. Yes, being a hormonally charged teenaged girl, I probably had a crush on him. Who wouldn't?" she Smirked.

"But the friendship and the lessons that he taught me were the most important things to me. My Master taught me to be a Jedi, the ways of the Force, and about being a person. Rex, more than anyone, taught me to lead; to be an example; and to care for those under my command. What it meant to be a soldier, rather than just a warrior. Both of them taught me to survive and to care for others."

Sabine watches her struggle. Those powerful blue eyes are welling, but the warrior doesn't give in.

"I have had lovers. I have had people I consider family - sisters, brothers; and people who I could respect as parents. I have a hunt-brother who shares my culture with me and will fight with me, for all that entails. I don't exactly know where he is, right now. But Rex is my closest friend, and will always be."

She shakes her head. "Rex wasn't the only one of my _Vod'e_ who raised me. They taught me their language, their fighting styles, their songs, and they protected me fiercely, even though they knew I could protect myself. Hell, they even taught me to fish, even though I already knew how to hunt."

"They had my back, whether it was in a fight with clankers, or making sure I had no problem discouraging my latest dance partner who got handsy while on leave in some club that I had snuck off to."

Her smile grows feral again. "Yes, they taught me a certain amount of mischief. They gave me my first taste of _ne'tra gal_. They taught me the curse words and the risqué songs in _Mando'a_ , as well."

"In return, I hope that I gave them joy and hope in an existence that was downright miserable for men who knew no other. I sat with them while they recovered. I held their hands when they were dying. I kissed them goodbye when they slipped away. Most of all, I Remembered them, as they had taught me."

"I don't have many possessions. I am most proud of two items, other than these lightsabers. My _Vod'e_ gave me a gift on my fifteenth name day. They gave me two DC-17 blasters and taught me how to use them. I never carried them in the field; the other Jedi Masters didn't approve, but I knew how to use them. My Master encouraged me to learn how, as well as their hand-to-hand lessons. He said it could be the difference between life and death."

Sabine is rapt. She can feel the wetness beneath her own eyes. She can feel the memories rolling off of the Jedi in waves.

"Ahsoka," she says, "I am sorry about what I said. I implied that you were a coward; that you didn't understand what it was to fight. I should've remembered the paramount teaching of a _Mando'ade_."

" _Aliit ori'shya tal'din_ \- Family is more than blood," she finishes.

Ahsoka looks at her and nods. "It's okay, Sabine. I was trying to provoke you."

"Why?"

The ex-Jedi is silent. "Because I could hear it in your voice. I could see it in your face as you were looking at those bruises in the mirror."

Sabine raises an eyebrow.

"Doubt. You were swimming in it. You felt like you failed your clan when you got taken out of the fight. That is something you need to get rid of, right now. Or it will eat at you until you get yourself killed."

She continues, as she sees the girl start to protest, "You were not meant to fight that Sith Lord. I can swear to you that in the future, you won't. If you have to, then things have gone to shit and I am already dead."

Sabine's eyes widen at the older woman's vehemence.

"Sabine, Hera told me, when briefing me on new crew, that you were already on your way to being one of the most powerful warriors - no soldiers that she had ever seen. That you were probably the most confident young woman of your age, she had ever seen."

Sabine is silent.

"That, my beautiful idiot, is the most powerful weapon that you bring to the table. Not your blasters, not your art, not even those secret toy surprises that you give the bucketheads."

"You can't lose that, of all things."

She pulls herself to her feet. She grasps the younger woman by the hand. "Wow, pretty spry for a grandma," Sabine snarks.

"Cheeky brat. I can still teach you a few moves in my decrepitude."

"Do you want to try another lesson? Something that I can teach you about lightsaber deflection that might give you a slight edge? Enough to to get away? Just in case I am dead."

Sabine's heart crashes at those words. She steels herself and nods.

"Run. Go get your _beskar'gam_ on. She swats the young warrior on the ass as she turns. "Go, I am not getting any younger, here!"

XXXXX

Ahsoka kneels and meditates, while waiting for Sabine to return. As she does, she sees the audience returning. She smiles.

Sabine is back quickly. She looks in surprise at Ahsoka, who remains in her sweat-soaked workout clothes.

"Where's your armor?"

"Don't need any. You won't hit me."

Sabine looks at her. "I brought the stingers...."

Ahsoka's eyes flash. "Are you going to fight the Dark Lord with those and give you and your friends time to escape after he had buried his lightsaber in my chest?" she says harshly.

"Use the Westars."

An audible gasp comes from the gallery. She hears the hum of the cargo holding field activate, as the Ghosts get behind it.

XXXXX

An hour later, several blasts dot the walls of the cargo bay. She can feel the dark thoughts coming from the Captain of the vessel, who winces and curses everytime the paint is burned.

Sabine's armor is dotted with the blasts, as well, but she is improving. The blasts are getting to be more glancing as she gets better at reading the subtle signs that might indicate where the blasts are deflected back to. She is still game.

"Tell you what, 'bine, Let's up the ante. What is your heart's desire - something that you want me to do above all else?"

Sabine starts to open her mouth, but closes it. _Can't ask for that in front of everybody._

She looks at the ex-Jedi. "I want you to sit for me."

Ahsoka is perplexed. "Like for a painting?"

"Exactly like a painting."

"That doesn't sound hard." She stops as she sees Sabine's smirk. "Oh." She closes her eyes and shakes her head.

"Okay. Just so long as you and I are the only ones that ever see it."

"Pinky promise," Sabine says.

"What is the bet?" Sabine asks.

"You hit me, you get to draw me. I hit you, I get a twelve-pack of your precious _ne'tra gal_. I love that stuff."

"Deal."

As she braces for the attack, Ahsoka Tano thinks of those who've gone before. Her friends, her brothers and her sisters. She thinks of a blond clone captain. She makes a note to go into her storage locker on the blockade runner. To find that tactical droid's head.

_It is time, my friend. My Vod. Time to rejoin the fight._

**Epilogue: The Soldier**

Rex walks into his quarters, as tired as he has ever been. He has settled the crew and seen to their injuries. He can't see to their dead.

He closes his eyes and thinks of _aay'han_ \- the simple Mando word that means so much, that describes his feelings right now.

 _Aay'han_ \- the bittersweet perfect moment of mourning and joy - the Remembrance and celebration of one who has gone before.

He sits at the table. His eyes focus on three items that had not been there before.

A bottle of cold _ne'tra gal_ \- that dark, spicy Mandalorian ale that he and his Commander had drank a planetful of. He smiles through his pain.

He notices two pieces of heavy artist's paper. The first, appears to be from memory, but is perfect. A sketch of a young woman caught in a thoughtful pose, the weight of the universe on her shoulders. Her carnivore's teeth worries the lower lip.The caption, written in a different ink, reads _Mando'ad Darsuum._

_Daughter of Mandalore, eternally._

The second, takes his breath away. This is a colored pencil work, unfinished, but for a larger piece. It is from life, as it precisely captures her essence.

The work is caught from her right, as her face looks over her bare orange shoulder. The drawing goes no further than those shoulders - those powerful shoulders. The vivid blues, whites, and oranges are perfect.

But it is the expression that rips his heart.

That Smirk. The look that infuriated him and numerous Jedi Masters on so many occasions. The look that made his heart rise after a particularly deadly battle, when her survival was not guaranteed. A look of life and of heart. Of love.

The caption bears one word. _Vod'ika_.

_Little sister._

Both pieces bear the numbers '2/2.' They also bear a particular sigil.

A sigil of the artist, a powerful and growing warrior in her own right. A warrior who gave all that she could to him as a remembrance.

Both pieces also bear fresh waterstains at the bottom.

He adds his own to those.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Mando'a translations courtesy of Mando'a.org and Wookieepedia.
> 
> Most I have included are self-explanatory or explained. A couple of exceptions:
> 
> be'jetti - possessive of Jedi - Jedi's  
> jetti'kad - lightsaber - Jedi sword
> 
> Thanks to Merfilly for the idea of gifts of blasters.
> 
> Yes. This does have some post TofA angst. It has been done; but felt like I had some small part to add.
> 
> P.S. Ahsoka Lives. That is all.


End file.
